My Rocky Relationship with the Post Office

If you follow me on Twitter (if you don’t maybe you should!) you’ve probably noticed some periodic tweets about the post office, including:

• I have no desire to pay the Post Office a dollar online to change my address when I used to be able to do it for free there!
• I’ve never had much luck with the U.S. Mail… now it’s followed me to work!
• The Post Office hates me. Family members tried to send me mail and it was returned! But I’m getting mail for someone else…

Our tedious relationship goes back earlier than twitter to receiving nasty notes written on my mail about cars parked on the street (somewhere in the same zip code as my mailbox) to receiving nasty notes on my car about parking on the street within a mile of my in-laws’ mailbox.

Then there was my college mailbox in the top row that I had to put up with for a whole year before they were able to change it. And of course, I’ve never encountered a mail carrier who is in a good mood.

It sucks, because I like getting mail. Hand-written letters and cards from family are the best! I get excited to check our top row mail box each day when I get home from work in whichever city I actually live in (our zip code belongs to 3 different cities).

The Post Office seems to be a failing business, in part thanks to email. I wonder if more people would mail things if they had better overall mail experiences.

Chances are they’ll only have five days a week to try to improve anyway.